I cried in the meeting.
It was my first week in a new contract.
Maybe I wouldn’t have cried that easily a few years earlier but I was fed up, frustrated and ANGRY. Not just for me but for OTHER women who have to go through such shit.
I was also more vulnerable now, as a mum returning to work – There was more at stake.
I already had an uphill struggle to find a role with some flex – that had been important to me well before having a child, but now even more so.
Now the role, where I had managed to secure this, had started I was told to “reassess my priorities”.
Even from those with good intentions, the starting point was I should change my arranged working pattern and childcare rather than ask a couple of team members if they minded moving an arbitary meeting… (They didn’t!)
I cried, not because I wasn’t strong, but because I WAS standing up for myself whilst being met with inflexibility, rigidity and stigma.
I was standing up for myself, and other women and men who want flexibility, who have caring responsibilities, who have potential that is wasted when they are pushed out of the workplace because of this shit.
I stand for flex for all, work-life, freedom
I stand for women (and all genders too!)
Have you experienced challenges with finding flexibility within project management?